Adding flowers to your garden isn’t just for the aesthetics. It’s an easy, natural way to boost productivity and create a more resilient ecosystem. There are a ton of positives to having flowers planted near vegetable and fruit plants. In this post, we’ll explore why planting flowers alongside your vegetable garden is one of the most rewarding things you can do for yourself and your garden.

Attract pollinators and larger harvests

Depending on what vegetables you are growing, you will need pollinators for your plants to actually produce food. Bees and butterflies are some of the most important pollinators in our garden, and we make sure to provide a lot of pollen for them. Pollination involves the transfer of pollen from the male part of a flower to the female part. As bees, flies, and butterflies move from flower to flower, they carry the pollen on their bodies and help pollinate your plants so vegetables and fruits will form. Some common vegetable plants that require pollination this way include tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplant. There’s a good chance you already have pollinators in your area, but adding flowers will give them more incentive to stay nearby and visit your plants frequently.

Not all vegetable plants require this type of pollination. Corn, wheat, and rice require wind pollination. Vegetables like carrots, lettuces, and broccoli do not require pollination, unless you want to save seeds from the plant. Look up each of your plants to determine what type of pollination, if any, they will need. Add flowers near any plants that will require pollination by insects.

Pest control

Insects will impact your plants in many other ways beyond pollination. In addition to bees and butterflies, there are other insects you want to have in your garden. Ladybugs are one of the most well known predatory insects. They’re a great addition to the garden because they love to eat aphids, which can wreak havoc on so many vegetable plants. Ladybugs are attracted to plants with pollen and nectar, so adding flowers to your garden will encourage these good insects to come to your space. Some of our favorite nectar rich flowers are yarrow and calendula.

Flowers can also be used to trap or repel insects that you do not want to have in your garden. Trap crops are plants that attract and trap insects so they stay away from your desired plants. These plants are usually grown next to your desired crop. A few popular trap crop flowers include nasturtiums, marigolds, and sunflowers. We keep several marigolds and nasturtium plants around our garden beds to draw aphids, thrips, and squash bugs away from our vegetables. They have significantly reduced the insects that eat our vegetable plants and some of the flowers are even edible!

Edible and Medicinal Flowers

Many people don’t realize just how many flowers are considered edible or have medicinal effects. Tea is a common way to consume edible and medicinal flowers. If you look at any tea packet you get from the store, you’ll likely find a number of different flowers included. Some common flowers used for tea are roses, jasmine, chamomile, violas, calendula, and echinacea. For many of these flowers, you can use the leaves and petals for tea, but you should always research or consult a doctor before consuming them. Most edible flowers can be consumed in other ways besides tea. Nasturtium is one of our favorite edible flowers. It has a more peppery taste to it and it’s our favorite plant to make pesto with each year.

In addition to being edible, many flowers have medicinal properties. Echinacea has immune supporting properties, which are mainly found in the roots of the plant. Calendula is known for anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, and is often used for salves or lotions. When looking for information on medicinal properties in our plants, we use the “Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine” by Andrew Chevallier, which was recommended by a local herbalist. Consider adding some of these edible and medicinal flowers to your garden to expand your harvests and support your health.

See our experience with growing chamomile.

Improve Soil Health

Flowers aren’t just good for you, some of them can also improve your soil’s health. Some flowers, especially those with long tap roots, can help improve soil structure and increase nutrient availability. Sunflowers and borage are two flowers that can be extremely useful in your garden, as well as beautiful. Sunflowers break up compaction in your soil, making your garden space better equipped to support other plants. Borage will provide calcium and potassium to your soil and its deep tap roots bring nutrients from lower levels of your soil to the surface. Borage is a great flower to chop and drop, meaning you grow it and then cut the plants down and leave them to decompose. The borage plants will decompose when mixed in with your soil, allowing the nutrients to be added back to your soil for future plants.

Add Color to Your Garden

Of course, adding flowers to your garden will add a lot of beauty and fragrances to your space. As a vegetable gardener, most of our vegetables don’t have a ton of color, unless the fruit or vegetable is about to be harvested. I love having a variety of flowers planted around my garden spaces because they provide constant color to a usually very green space. There are so many different colored flowers you can find, whether at your local garden store or grown from seed. In addition to color, a lot of flowers give off strong fragrances. This will be a personal preference for each gardener, but I love to walk past a garden space and smell the flowers that are in bloom. Some of our favorite fragrances come from tulips and chamomile, so we keep large patches of those flowers growing. There are also flowering trees and bushes that can add beautiful color and fragrance to your space. When picking out your flowers, check when they are expected to bloom so you can have a variety of colorful and fragrant blooms throughout the season.

Ease of Growing

Many flowers are a lot easier to grow than you may think. If you’re not sure where to start, native wildflower mixes are an easy choice that will give you a variety of flowers that are simple to grow. You can also choose perennial flowers, like echinacea, which only require you to plant them once. They’ll come back on their own year after year and may even self-seed and expand as they grow. There are many annual flowers that are easy to collect seeds from and replant each year. Being able to save money and continue having beautiful, pollinator-friendly plants every year is a no brainer as a gardener.

Start Planting

Whether you are considering planting flowers for their look, smell, taste, or more practical use in the garden, they will be a wonderful addition to any garden space. There are so many different types of flowers to choose from, so try out several and see what you end up liking the most. Layer flowers into your garden beds or use them as borders for some of your vegetable growing spaces. Don’t forget to plant some flowers that bloom at different times so you always have some available.

How Flowers Can Increase Your Garden Harvest and Boost Your Garden’s Health